Wednesday, October 22, 2008

Economics, commonly known as the "dismal science," can actually be easily understood. Here are each of the basic economic philosophies explained in simple "two-cow" terms (first articulated years ago during a delightful dinner in Washington DC with Murray Rothbard):

Communalism: You have two cows. You keep one and give one to your neighbor.

Communism: You have two cows. The government takes them both and--from time to time--provides you with sour milk.

Fascism: You have two cows. The government takes them and sells you the milk.

Liberalism: You have two cows. The government takes them both, shoots one, milks the other, pays you for the milk, and then pours it down the drain.

Socialism: You have two cows. The government taxes you to the point that you must sell them both in order to support a man in a foreign country who has only one cow which was a gift from your government.

Free-Market Capitalism: You have two cows. You sell one and buy a bull.

Centralized, Multi-National-Corporation-Based, Government-Subsidized, Democratic Socialism: You have two cows. You sell one, force the other to produce the milk of four cows and when it dies you write off the depreciation, hire a lobbyist, and garner a government bail-out and tax-breaks in order to purchase two new cows. Repeat.

Another way to put this is an example from J. Budziszewski’s book, The Revenge of Conscience: Politics and the Fall of Man:

On a dark street, a man draws a knife and demands my money for drugs.

Instead of demanding my money for drugs, he demands it for the Church.

Instead of being alone, he is with a bishop of the Church who act as bagman.

Instead of drawing a knife, he produces a policeman who says I must do as he says.

Instead of meeting me on the street, he mails me his demand as an official agent of the government.

If the first is theft, it is difficult to see why the other four are not also theft.

I wonder what will happen when some of the Democrats who wouldn't have voted for Obama if they knew some of the stuff I have on me too complacent to press a button or to. I throw out the "what if McCain was associated closely with an unrepent abortion clinic bomber." No one has an answer to that.

Tuesday, October 21, 2008

This is what we will get when the Democrats have a super-majority... a dramatic increase in taxes, a rise in the already ballooning deficit, and rich people (the ones that start businesses and hire people and invest in the stock-market.

Stanley Kurtz continues his efforts to be proclaimed an Enemy of the State in a prospective Barack Obama presidency with his essay today on Chicago’s New Party. While the Tanning Bed Media continues to report on Joe the Plumber’s driving record, only a handful of journalists appear interested in the record of an actual politician. Kurtz discovers that Obama’s affiliation with the New Party brought him into alliance with hard-Left progressives, Socialists, and into a partnership with ACORN:

During his first campaign for the Illinois state senate in 1995-96, Barack Obama was a member of, and was endorsed by, the far-left New Party. Obama’s New Party ties give the lie to his claim to be a post-partisan, post-ideological pragmatist. Particularly in Chicago, the New Party functioned as the electoral arm of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN). So despite repeated attempts to distance himself from ACORN, Obama’s New Party ties raise disturbing questions about his links to those proudly militant leftists. The media’s near-total silence on this critical element of Obama’s past is deeply irresponsible.

Stanley, Stanley, Stanley … stop being such a racist. Don’t you know that the media has more important tasks than to inform the electorate about the candidates for the Presidency? I hear Joe Wurzelbacher may have belonged to something called the Natural Law Party over twenty years ago. That’s obviously much more important than Obama’s political record!

In any case, the New Party was clearly far to the left of mainstream Democrats, and according to Sifry, the party explicitly thought of itself as made up of committed “progressives,” rather than conventional “liberals.” That is entirely consistent with a famous 1995 profile of Obama by Hank De Zutter, which portrays him as closely tied to ACORN, and holding a world-view well “beyond” his mother’s conventional liberalism.

To get a sense of where the New Party stood politically, consider some of its early supporters: Barbara Dudley of Greenpeace, Steve Cobble political director of Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow Coaltion, and prominent academics like Frances Fox Piven coauthor of the “Cloward-Piven strategy” and a leader of the drive for the “motor-voter” legislation Obama later defended in court on behalf of ACORN, economist Juliet Schor, black historian, Manning Marable, historian Howard Zinn, linguist Noam Chomsky, Todd Gitlin, and writers like Gloria Steinem, and Barbara Ehrenreich. Socialist? Readers can draw their own conclusions. At one point, Sifry does describe the party’s goals as “social democratic.” In any case, the New Party clearly stands substantially to the left of the mainstream Democratic party.

Come on, Stanley. Try to keep up. Joe the Plumber isn’t licensed in Ohio! Do you know what that means? Unless the government officially declares you a plumber, you can’t be one. Why aren’t you joining the masses of your colleagues in exposing Joe as a fraud?

Unquestionably, ACORN was one of the most important forces behind the creation of the New Party. According to Sifry: “Wade Rathke, ACORN’s lead national organizer, was in on the founding discussions that led to the New Party, and the group’s political director, Zach Polett, also came to play a big role in guiding New Party field organizing for the party [in Chicago and Little Rock].” In fact, Sifry portrays ACORN’s leading role in the New Party as the result of a conscious decision by the organization to move into electoral politics in a more substantial way than they had been able to solely through their political action committee. In addition to Rathke and Polett, a key early supporter of the New Party was Obama’s closest ACORN contact, Madeline Talbott.

Psst, Stanley. Did you know that Joe’s real first name is Samuel? He’s not even a real Joe. Well, except for his middle name, which he’s used consistently, but that’s not the point.

Obviously, Stanley Kurtz is not satisfied with membership in the Tanning Bed Media — and thank goodness. Kurtz takes a measured approach in this essay, refraining from labeling the New Party as Socialist. As Kurtz points out, it included socialists, but also many more people from the Left. It gave socialists and redistributionists their best opportunity to enter mainstream politics by influencing the direction of the Democrats in Chicago, and one of their stars in this effort was Barack Obama.

Tellingly, Kurtz’ best source for the New Party and its ties to ACORN is Micah Sifry. The progressive writer first committed the history of the New Party in his book Spoiling for a Fight, written in 2002 detailing the history of independent parties in the US. Using this history, Kurtz can easily draw the lines of alliance between Obama, ACORN, and the radicals and redistributionists who sought to pull the Democrats harder to the Left in Chicago — and who succeeded with Obama.

Why haven’t the national media done the same research? They’re too busy reporting on tanning beds and Joe the Plumber’s divorce records to spend any time vetting an actual presidential candidate.

Farrakhan supports Obama (Nation of Islam leader who is a racist... and whom Obama went to the Million Man March -- a recruiting tool [via author of The Trouble With Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam] -- and who thinks Obama is the “messiah”...a radically different meaning than the “orthodox” understanding.This connection is one of racial hatred for white people in a theological setting.);

FARK supports Obama (FARK is the Marxist revolutionary terrorists in parts of South America.Captured computers by Columbia show a hope that Obama will win.This connection is because of Obama’s many connections to Marxist radicals here in the United States.Obama had portions of his audiobook removed that linked him to one such person.Another help get him into Harvard.And he [Obama] is known to have reads specific Marxist literature.);

Hugo Chavez supports Obama (here again is the Marxist connection and the ideal to nationalize/socialize [same thing really] the private sector and to make war by using the politics of race, class, and wealth.);

Rev. Jeremiah Wright supports Obama (Rev. Wright is a theological racist and even on national television asked Sean Hannity, and thus the American audience, to read a racist theologian that “rewrites” the Bible to say that the Black race are the only true Christians.);

Major European socialists have come out in support for Obama (again, it is this utopian push to create a “perfect society” here and now.This is a major distinction between conservatives and progressives all across the globe... and understanding that man’s nature will not allow a utopian government or society);

Jimmy Carter (nuff said).

JERUSALEM – In an exclusive interview tonight, a senior Hamas official heaped praise on Sen. Joe Biden, calling him a "very nice" person and a "great man" whose record "speaks volumes" and who can be counted on by the terror group to engage in the "right policy" toward the Middle East.

During the interview with WND's Aaron Klein and WABC Radio's John Batchelor, the Hamas figure also expressed hope regarding Sen. Barack Obama's "vision for change," announcing Hamas will send Obama a letter of congratulation "the moment he will win the election."....